Saint John XXIII's second miracle might have occurred at Sheppton Mining Disaster

Times-Shamrock Newspapers
David Fellin, left, and Hank Throne after the rescue. Fellin insisted he saw the late Pope John XXIII while trapped in the mine. Fellin took to his grave 27 years later in 1990. Throne lived 35 more years, and was just as insistent that he had witnessed a miracle.

Pope John XXIII's recent canonization was exceptional. Catholic doctrine holds that two miracles are needed for sainthood. John was declared "blessed" in September 2000 by Pope John Paul II, after a miracle of curing an ailing Italian nun was discovered. When a second miracle could not be identified, Pope Francis waived the requirement citing John's many good works.

Perhaps the Catholic Church should have taken a closer look at the Sheppton Mine Disaster of 1963, and the miraculous rescue of two miners who had been trapped underground for two weeks.

Sheppton remains one of the most dramatic events in the history of anthracite coal mining. On Tuesday, Aug. 13, 1963, miners David Fellin, 58, Hank Throne, 28, and Lou Bova, 54, were working at the Fellin Coal Company, 17 miles northwest of Tamaqua, when a cave-in trapped them some 330 feet below ground.

Fellin and Throne were caught inside a damp, cold chamber that was about 6' long, 6' wide and 6' high. Huddling against each other to stay warm, the two men feared they would be given up for dead. Bova was trapped in an adjacent chamber when the roof of the mine collapsed. Rescue crews were unable to penetrate the entrance shaft to the mine due to the threat of additional cave-ins as well as the presence of poisonous carbon dioxide.

After the first three days when all hope seemed gone, Fellin's brother, Joe, pleaded with United Mine Workers officials to locate the trapped miners by drilling a borehole

into the mine. The UMW convinced state mining officials to give it a try, and they reluctantly agreed.

Meanwhile, television crews, newspaper reporters and radio stations from around the globe descended on the small town of Sheppton, Schulkill County, to cover the rescue effort. For the next week, the world watched and wondered, not knowing for certain if the men were dead or alive.

Having been a miner for more than 40 years, Fellin didn't have much hope that they'd be rescued. He knew there was only one way into and out of the mine and that tons of rock, coal and dirt blocked it.

Fellin and Throne almost gave up hope until the fourth day when they "saw a door covered in bright blue light."

"It was very clear, better than sunlight," Fellin recalled later. "Two ordinary looking men, not miners, opened the door. We could see beautiful marble steps on the other side." Then, they were "visited by Pope John XXIII," who had died of stomach cancer 10 weeks prior to the mining disaster.

Just before midnight on Aug. 18, the rescue workers, who had been laboring for two full days, succeeded in drilling a 6-inch-wide borehole through the roof of the cramped chamber, where Fellin and Throne had sought refuge. A light and a microphone were lowered into the enclosure.

Within minutes, a rescue worker established contact with the two miners and the miraculous news that they were still alive after five days underground sent shivers to people around the world. Sadly, attempts to reach Bova in the adjacent chamber were unsuccessful and his body was never recovered.

It took nine more days to drill a 28-inch borehole, large enough to extricate the surviving miners from the chamber. Finally, on the early morning of Tuesday, Aug. 27, Throne, then Fellin were pulled to the surface wearing parachute harnesses and football helmets.

When the two miners claimed that they had been visited by Pope John XXIII, their vision was dismissed as a hallucination due to lack of food, water and oxygen. But they both insisted that the deceased pontiff stayed with them until the rescue workers were able to locate them.

"We saw him for some time but couldn't explain it," said Fellin, a devout Catholic who refused to elaborate because he "felt too deeply about all this."

Implicit in his statement was the belief that Pope John had provided the assurance the two miners needed to survive, and that their rescue was a miracle that could only be attributed to him.

To be sure, John surpassed all expectations during his papacy. Elected on Oct. 15, 1958 to be a caretaker pope, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, then age 76, took the name John XXIII and became a reformer. He promptly led the Catholic Church into the modern era by allowing Mass to be said in native languages rather than Latin and, in 1962, calling for the Second Vatican Council.

Unlike his predecessors, John boldly ventured out of the confines of the Vatican visiting parishes in Rome, consoling children suffering from polio at nearby hospitals and even meeting with inmates at local prisons. As a result, John came to be known affectionately as the "Good Pope" who actually went out to meet his flock.

Once, when asked why by a prisoner why he came to visit, John replied: "You could not come to me, so I came to you." It was a response that might have easily been given to the entrapped coal miners at Sheppton.

The dramatic rescue effort was front-page news in virtually every newspaper across the United States. Some reported the miners' vision of the deceased Pope John XXIII, almost as if to confirm the occurrence of a religious miracle. In fact, "The Los Angeles Times" published a front-page story bearing the headline, "MINE MIRACLE."

When some newspaper reporters tried to bait Fellin and Throne suggesting that they experienced hallucinations rather than a miraculous vision, both men insisted separately and publicly that they saw the deceased pontiff.

"Now they're trying to tell me those things were hallucinations, that we imagined it all," Fellin was quoted as saying in the "Philadelphia Inquirer" of Aug. 29, 1963. "We didn't. Our minds weren't playing tricks on us. I've been a practical, hard-headed coal miner all my life. My mind was clear down there in the mine. It's still clear."

It was an emphatic declaration that Fellin took to his grave 27 years later in 1990. Throne lived 35 more years, and was just as insistent that he had witnessed a miracle.

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